5th Grade Surrealism Collages

Students explored dreams and reality with Surrealism. They studied the surrealism movement; a period in art history in which artists tried to access the creativity of the unconscious mind.  Artists including Rene Magritte, Kay Sage, Hannah Hoch, and Salvador Dali created many works that blurred the line between dreams and reality. To start of the unit on surrealism students participated in the surrealist game called Exquisite Corpse, in which a creature is drawn collaboratively. It's a great game to play with the family at home, look it up or ask a 5th grader how to play it.

Students then investigated the Surrealist technique of "seeing into" or "Paranoiac Critical Method". This exercise was coined by Salvador Dali and is all about looking at things in a new way. Students delved next into the surrealist technique of collage. Students began with a magazine background and had the challenge of altering an image and thus creating a new work of art.